Summer Fruit Pie

Mango and Apple Pie

(the combination of mangoes and apples with cinnamon complement each other)

Everyone in my family loves apple pie, especially American apple pie. American apple pie is a pie with a soft-flaky crust filled with a sweet cinnamon apple filling. It is really nice, but I find it a bit too overpowering, especially the sweetness combined with the strong cinnamon flavor.

In the past, I have made several variations to this common pie – I substituted caramel for the cinnamon-sugar; topped the pie with an oatmeal-crumb topping; and mixed in various fruits with the apples. The latter is this pie – a combination of apples and mangoes.

Pastry
I have used only one pastry recipe for everything – from sweet fruit pies to savory meat pastries. I got this from “Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking.” My grandmother’s copy was printed in 1974 (long before I was born) and has been out of print for decades.

I use the proportions for a two-crust 9-inch pie.

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter or ¾ cup vegetable shortening
Ice water (around ½ cup)

Mix the flour and salt on a bowl. Drop in cut up pieces of shortening or butter. Cut the shortening into the flour until you end up with some pea-sized pieces of butter coated with flour. It doesn’t have to be uniform. Overmixing may result in a tough and non-flaky dough. Add enough ice water until mixture comes together in a ball. Perhaps two tablespoons at a time. Do NOT knead! Flatten dough and chill, wrapped in plastic.

Cut pastry in half. Roll on a lightly floured surface then slide on to a 9 inch pie plate. Fill. Roll the remaining half and cover the pie. Flute edges.

Filling
I like my pie with a tall dome - before and after baking. The key is to stuff it with enough fruit, then leave it in the oven just until the fruit has become soft, not turned into mush! I usually use six apples for a nine-inch American apple pie.

Granny smith is the best apple for pies – it is tart and firm. It holds its shape even after baking. The red table apples tend to turn into applesauce even if cut into large chunks. They simply melt away in the heat! But you can certainly mix equal amounts of the two to cut on the tartness, change the texture and add more flavor to the pie.

For this pie, use three medium sized granny smith apples, peeled, cored and cut into one inch chunks. Cutting them into thin slices tends to turn them into applesauce after an hour of baking. You can even substitute a pear in lieu of an apple.

I also used two to three ripe Philippine mangoes, cut into chunks larger than the apples so they will hold their shape after baking. If you live outside the Philippines and cannot find Philippine mangoes, use ripe or canned yellow peaches instead. The flavor is much closer to Philippine mangoes.

Toss the fruits in a large bowl. Add the zest of one lemon. Add the juice of the lemon as well. Taste the fruits. It should be tart. Add more lemon to adjust the sourness.

In a small bowl, mix one cup sugar with three tablespoons cornstarch and one teaspoon cinnamon. Add ¼ teaspoon each of nutmeg and cardamom. The latter two spices complement the cinnamon. They also cut its sharpness.

Sprinkle the bottom of the pie crust with one tablespoon of the sugar mixture. Scatter some pieces of butter (around one tablespoon). Cover with fruit. Repeat the process using up all the fruit and ending with the sugar mixture. Cover with the remaining crust. (or with crumb topping). Leave slits in top of the pie if using the pastry crust.

(repeat the layers of fruit, cinnamon sugar and butter, starting and ending with the sugar and butter)

Bake in a 350° oven for 30 minutes until top is lightly browned. Reduce temperature to 300° and bake for another 45 minutes. To test for doneness, poke the center of the pie through the pastry slit with a toothpick. If you can sink it all the way to the bottom with slight resistance, then pie is done. It will still cook outside of the oven with some residual heat. If filling is already soft and done while still inside the oven, then it will turn into a mush when it cools.


(you can test for doneness by inserting toothpicks through the slits and poke the fruit pieces for desired tenderness - but remember that residual heat will continue to cook the fruit pieces)

Cool completely on rack, then serve.